Intercultural perspective in the office of employment: reflections on an experience of articulation between municipality and university in Bariloche

Abstract

In 2015, the city of San Carlos de Bariloche was declared an intercultural municipality by ordinance. Nevertheless, this recognition of rights did not translate into a political intent to materialize them. This doesn’t mean that initiatives regarding the “interculturalization” of certain tools or areas of the municipality hasn’t or aren’t being developed. The ordinance has been implemented in certain local State sections or instances based on initiatives and experiences fomented “from the bottom up”, by municipal workers and/or demands from mapuche individuals, organizations or communities. In this paper, I analyze one of those experiences and its characteristics and, based on this case, I reflect on two topics. On the one hand, I analyze the meanings in relation to the indigenous, the interculturality and the cultural relations that engage in conflicts, taking into account how the bureaucratic logic, the institutional dynamics, the academic knowledge, among other factors, come into play.
On the other hand, I reflect about the anthropologists role (trained and in formation) and
of the university in state management work, attending to the complexity of anthropological
practice and its disciplinary commitments.